Review: Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel and ATEM Television Studio HD

Multi View

Multi View (Figure 14, below) is also very cool. You can see with this small HD2400 Series monitor that I’m using, I have a multi-view setup with my program on top, preview on the bottom, and then all my camera views on the right, stacked.

Figure 14. Multi View. Click the image to see it at full size.

Not only can I select which cameras are displayed here, but I can choose where they're displayed. Using the drop-down menu shown in Figure 15 (below), I can choose exactly what shows up in each box on the screen.

Figure 15. Assign input source placement in the Multi View here.

My URSA camera is at the top left, PTZOptics, top right, and so on. They're easy to see at the top. The other thing you can do is assign, for example, your media players as inputs. In this view I can see all four of the sources I have available right now, on screen at the top, exactly where I want them, and it puts the name on-screen. The OSD is very nice, because you can be very confident in what you're selecting is what you want.

If all your cameras are the same model, then you would number them or do something else, accordingly. I created custom names under Labels. If I wanted to do that with the media players, I would go under the Media tab and just rename those.

Of course, you can leave them as the defaults or you can change them to something custom. Going back to the settings, HyperDecks is where, again, you would find your HyperDeck controls if you had one. I also want to point out that the Television Studio does support both the control VSDI for the Blackmagic cameras, but it also supports VISCA protocols and that's very important if you have, say, another brand of a PTZ camera. Most PTZ cameras have that multi-pin HD15 connector, so that you can control older cameras as well, without having to use a separate controller for that single camera or having to use a remote control that may not be very effective. The way you do that with the hardware here, is with the joystick.

That's the software.

Television Studio HD

Now let's take a look at the Television Studio HD (Figure 2). The Television Studio is a very small, rack-mountable piece of equipment. It's chock full of features, most of them are on the back with your inputs and outputs. On the front (Figure 16, below) we have hardware buttons to select the source that we want to display.

Figure 16. The Television Studio HD front panel

You have audio-follow-video toggle buttons, to where you can have that on or off, depending on what you need for each camera source. You have a couple of buttons that are also replicated on the Advanced Panel: Fade to Black, Media Players, and whether you want to cut to the preview or do an auto-fade or transition to the preview.

You have a menu button to change settings, which are much more easily done on the software because this is a tiny screen with a tiny button that can be hard to navigate.

The Advanced Panel

Now let’s move to the star of the show, the Advanced Panel (Figure 1). This is where all the action is going to happen. If you're operating this as a director, this is the most important piece that you need to have. A lot of this we've already seen in the software, but I want to show you, also, how you don't have to use gaffer tape on this to tell you which camera is which. The Advanced Panel has screens that are above and below, respectively, the Program and the Preview lines of buttons (Figure 17, below).

Figure 17. The Advanced Panel’s layout enables easy camera identification. Click the image to see it at full size.

As you can see, the names that I assigned in the software have shown up for the two cameras--the URSA Pro for Camera 5, and the PTZOptics for Camera 6. Of course, I can infer, in this case, what numbers they are because I have four and seven on either side. If you needed to, you could include that number with your naming, so the numbers stay there in case you need to call out something by a number.

On the lower level, besides the premium program buttons, you have a selection of transitions: Mix, of course, being like a dissolve; Wipe, providing, say, a shape wipe; Dip for dip to a color. When you change to white, you can see in Figure 18 (below) that the screen up here actually changes. It now shows you the rate, which is of course, the time that it takes to make that transition and then the pattern. The time only applies if you use the auto button. It's going to automatically take one second in this case to make that change.

Figure 18. Applied transitions are reflected in the screen above the transition panel of buttons. Click the image to see it at full size.

That's a slow way to go about it, but in a pinch, you can do it. The best way is to go back to your Software Control, go to the transition's panel, switch to Wipe, and then choose the shape you want. We can do a corner transition and immediately change changes on screen and then pressing the Auto button will give you that transition for the next time you switch. You can quickly change to a different one and make it wipe the other way if you want.

Moving up to the top row of buttons shown in Figure 19 (below), you have a series of soft buttons along the top, above the screen, which will be enabled whenever there's something on the menu. On the right, you have a number pad, which is good for quickly entering values, especially for the IP address range. You can also use these dials here, but sometimes it's faster and more precise just to punch the number in directly.

Figure 19. Menu buttons. Click the image to see it at full size.

The Advanced Panel also has a joystick you can use for camera control (top right in Figure 19). If you have a PTZ camera, using the VISCA protocol, you can use this joystick to operate the camera. It twists to zoom and then moves, of course, left, right, up, and down to control the pan and tilt.

On the left in Figure 19, you can easily access the menus for most of what you can do below, including your transitions, mix, wipe, DVE dip, and then you also have your keyers for doing any kind of a chroma key or luma key. You also have settings for master settings for the panel. You have camera control, which would be where you get to change settings for either the Blackmagic camera control or VISCA.

And then you have audio and macros. Macros, of course, would be if I want to pre-record a series of switches at different rates, with different transitions, I can go into macro, hit record, record that, and then call that back up at any time and have it execute it automatically on the advanced panel.

The last thing I want to show you is, how you can use the media players. While number one is in preview, I can go to media players on the Advanced Panel or in the software. To control them with the Advanced Panel, I can use the dial shown in Figure 20 (below) to change to a different still. It shows me not only the file name, but a preview, of course, immediately on screen when I switch to that different image.

Figure 20. Choosing a still with the Media Player on the Advanced Panel. Click the image to see it at full size.

It's great that you have the option to be able to change your graphics up here on the panel, but in a lot of cases, it's easier to do it on the software. One of the reasons for that is, in the software, you can see all the thumbnails at once for what you have available and if you need to call something else up, you can do that here.

Until you have it in your stills in the software, you don't have them available to you on the panel itself. Again, this is a case where having two people would be helpful because the second person on the computer could be putting the images in the stills, changing them out, whatever needs to be done, while the director just concentrates on operating the panel and running the show.

That's an introduction and an overview of the Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel and the Television Studio HD. The Advanced Panel is accessible enough for rookies to not be intimidating, but it's also advanced and customizable enough for veteran directors.